Nearly five years ago, The Economist published a front cover featuring a scruffy-looking Viking, accompanied by the words: “The Next Supermodel: Why the world should look at the Nordic countries.” While the world’s bigger countries and current and former superpowers struggled with their problems, the Nordic countries — Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland — seemed to have their act together, winning praise over and over again for their healthy economies, relatively low crime rates and high standards of living.

Over the intervening five years, not much has changed. The Nordics continue to be strong performers in all the areas that matter. When this blog looked at countries’ performance across four indices last May — the Human Development Index, the Corruption Perceptions Index, the World Competitiveness Scoreboard and the Global Peace Index — the Nordics constituted at least four of the world’s 10 best countries, with Denmark taking the number-one spot. (Canada ranked either fourth or sixth, depending on whether you ranked each country by its “weakest link” or by its average score.)

Now there’s more good news for the Nordics. John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs of the New York-based Sustainable Development Solutions Network have released their 2017 World Happiness Report, and concluded that Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Switzerland were the world’s happiest societies in the 2014-16 period.* They credit Norway’s high ranking on “mutual trust, shared purpose, generosity and good governance”, as well as good management of its oil reserves, and using the proceeds from it to prepare for a better future instead of spending it all as it comes in.

“Mutual trust, shared purpose, generosity and good governance” are not words, however, that would describe 2017 in our neighbour to the south. The United States has had a memorable 2017 for all the wrong reasons — and it showed in its rank. As noted:

The USA is a story of reduced happiness. In 2007 the USA ranked 3rd among the OECD countries; in 2016 it came 19th [Note: this might be a typo — the report’s data tables show the U.S. in 14th place; it was the U.K. that was in 19th place]. The reasons are declining social support and increased corruption . . . and it is these same factors that explain why the Nordic countries do so much better.

The authors particularly singled out the U.S. government’s priorities for criticism. As they bluntly note on page 180:

America’s crisis is, in short, a social crisis, not an economic crisis . . . This American social crisis is widely noted, but it has not translated into public policy. Almost all of the policy discourse in Washington DC centers on naïve attempts to raise the economic growth rate, as if a higher growth rate would somehow heal the deepening divisions and angst in American society. This kind of growth-only agenda is doubly wrong-headed. First, most of the pseudo-elixirs for growth — especially the Republican Party’s beloved nostrum of endless tax cuts and voodoo economics — will only exacerbate America’s social inequalities and feed the distrust that is already tearing society apart. Second, a forthright attack on the real sources of social crisis would have a much larger and more rapid beneficial effect on U.S. happiness.

One could only imagine the authors’ alarm that, having just passed controversial tax reform legislation, there is now talk of targeting America’s already modest social safety net for deep cuts. As the New York Times reported on Dec. 2:

As the tax cut legislation passed by the Senate early Saturday hurtles toward final approval, Republicans are preparing to use the swelling deficits made worse by the package as a rationale to pursue their long-held vision: undoing the entitlements of the New Deal and Great Society, leaving government leaner and the safety net skimpier for millions of Americans.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other Republicans are beginning to express their big dreams publicly, vowing that next year they will move on to changes in Medicare and Social Security. President Trump told a Missouri rally last week, “We’re going to go into welfare reform.”

In fact, the core items of the social safety net already constitute a relatively small share of total U.S. local, state and federal government spending. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data show that, in 2015, only 21 percent of total government spending was dedicated to what the OECD classifies as “social protection”; that is, sickness, disability, old age, housing and unemployment support.

This already puts the U.S. toward the bottom of OECD nations in terms of the percentage of local, regional and national government spending on social protection. Indeed, given the low priority their own governments give to their well-being, not to mention other abuses like drawing local electoral boundaries to guarantee one-party rule, why shouldn’t Americans feel bitterly resentful toward their governments?

In Norway, social protection was a significant 40 percent of all government spending in 2015 despite an unemployment rate of just four percent that year and 75 percent of all Norwegians aged 15-64 having a job — one of the highest rates in the world.

That spending paid off, according to a 2017 OECD report on Norway. Not only has it helped provide the sense of well-being that the lack of prompted many Americans to vote for Donald Trump in 2016, but it is something the OECD recommended that Norway leave intact (emphasis mine):

Fiscal reform should not aim to significantly reduce the scope of Norway’s comprehensive welfare programmes and public services. These are integral to its socio-economic model, playing a key role in making economic growth inclusive and keeping well-being high. Given the fiscal rule, this means that taxation will remain high compared with many countries. Consequently, a pro-growth tax mix, strong labour skills and easier regulations for doing business are needed for the business sector to thrive in global markets.

As we end 2017, revolution is in the air as like no other time in the past 50 years, if not the past 100 years. Some look to the hard-left for solutions to the high level of anxiety, some to the hard-right. What the world could really use, though, is a bit of Nordic sense by protecting not jobs, not industries, but people.

* – Canada ranked seventh in the World Happiness Report, just behind Finland and the Netherlands. New Zealand, Australia and Sweden rounded out the top 10.

“Big changes considered for Ontario workplaces,” said one headline on the CBC News Toronto web site this past February, after it had been revealed that, among other things, Ontario’s provincial government was considering raising the minimum annual holiday required by the province’s Employment Standards legislation from two weeks to three.

The Ontario government is indeed proposing to raise minimum annual holidays from two weeks to three weeks. Here’s the catch, however: it only applies to those who have worked for the same employer continuously for at least five years. Anyone with less than five years’ service could still legally be offered only two weeks per year under the proposed change.

“We have fallen behind,” Wynne said as the proposed change was revealed.

“And we don’t really feel like catching up,” she might as well have added.

Ontario and P.E.I. remain the only provinces without a third-week provision.

Saskatchewan is the only province to have broken the two-week baseline. Their laws provide for three weeks annual holiday to start, rising to four weeks after 10 years.

By international standards, Ontario’s not-so-big change looks even less impressive. In 1970, signatories to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Holidays with Pay Convention each pledged to provide for annual holidays that would be “in no case . . . less than three working weeks for one year of service.” Canada, however, was never among the signatories.

Now, compare that to Australia. Australians first won the right to two weeks annual holiday with the Annual Holidays Act in 1945. This was raised to a three-week minimum — still unheard of in Canada outside of Saskatchewan — in 1963. That country further increased the legal minimum to four weeks in 1974.

Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand — a country which dislikes being compared to Australia, but I’ll do it here anyway — was a little more restrained. They won two weeks annual leave in 1944, threw in a third week 30 years later, and finally raised their legal minimum to four weeks per year in 2007.

Surely to God a modest boost from two weeks to three weeks annual holiday per year, merely meeting the ILO’s recommended rock-bottom minimum and matching what New Zealanders had from 1974 to 2007, would not make a dent in any province’s economy. It might even provide a very mild stimulus as people used the time to spend money on things that they don’t normally spend money on during the typical work day or weekend. It would be an easy and fairly equitable crowd-pleaser, too.

It was a risk that Kathleen Wynne’s nearly 14-year-old (i.e., geriatric, in political terms) Liberal government could have afforded to take. Instead, they reinforced a penurious status quo, only a little bit more generous than Japan’s legendarily limited allowances — although even Japan has slowly started to come around to the idea of taking holidays in the face of a persistent economic and quality-of-life malaise.

Meanwhile in Canada, the stinginess on annual holiday provisions goes on and on and on.

This is particularly timely given that the White House is currently occupied by a bizarre new president who has vowed to “make America great again”. Just what does “great” look like? To be a contender, by my standards, a great country needs to provide its citizens with an exceptional quality of life, an honest form of government and judicial dispute resolution, economic opportunity, and protection from harm. Thus, it should rank highly across all four of the indices noted above.

As I did last time, I converted each country’s raw score in each index — not its rank — into a new score showing the country’s proximity to the best performer in that class. Then, I calculated the average score across the four indices

Last time out, Denmark emerged as the world’s best country, followed closely by Switzerland, New Zealand, Finland and Norway. Canada’s average score of 91.6 was good enough for a seventh-place finish, just behind Sweden.

This year, not much has changed. Denmark, Switzerland and New Zealand repeat their first-, second- and third-place finishes, with Sweden and (surprise!) Singapore rounding out the top five — even though Singapore performed relatively weakly in the Global Peace Index. Iceland, Norway and Canada tied for sixth place with a score of 91.5, while Finland and the Netherlands round out the top 10 with another tie at 90.1 each.

COUNTRY

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX (2015)

CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX (2016)

WORLD COMPETITIVENESS SCOREBOARD (2016)

GLOBAL PEACE INDEX (2016)

AVERAGE

Denmark

97.5

100.0

93.6

95.7

96.7

Switzerland

98.9

95.6

100.0

87.0

95.4

New Zealand

96.4

100.0

87.3

92.6

94.1

Sweden

96.2

97.8

94.2

81.6

92.5

Singapore

97.5

93.3

99.6

77.7

92.0

Iceland

97.0

86.7

82.2

100.0

91.5

Norway

100.0

94.4

91.9

79.5

91.5

Canada

96.9

91.1

91.9

85.9

91.5

Finland

94.3

98.9

83.7

83.4

90.1

Netherlands

97.4

92.2

93.2

77.4

90.1

Germany

97.6

90.0

90.4

80.2

89.6

Ireland

97.3

81.1

93.4

83.2

88.8

Australia

98.9

87.8

86.0

81.4

88.5

Austria

94.1

83.3

81.8

93.3

88.1

Japan

95.2

80.0

80.3

85.4

85.2

Belgium

94.4

85.6

82.3

78.0

85.1

United Kingdom

95.8

90.0

85.0

65.1

84.0

United States

96.9

82.2

99.9

55.3

83.6

France

94.5

76.7

74.9

65.2

77.8

What if we calculate each country’s standing a bit differently by looking not at the average, but at the weakest link — the point at which the country deviates the most from the perfect score of 100? In this case, Denmark still remains number-one, with a score of 93.6, followed by New Zealand and Switzerland. Canada, meanwhile, breaks out of its tie with Norway and Iceland for a fourth-place finish.

COUNTRY

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX (2015)

CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX (2016)

WORLD COMPETITIVENESS SCOREBOARD (2016)

GLOBAL PEACE INDEX (2016)

“WEAKEST LINK”

Denmark

97.5

100.0

93.6

95.7

93.6

New Zealand

96.4

100.0

87.3

92.6

87.3

Switzerland

98.9

95.6

100.0

87.0

87.0

Canada

96.9

91.1

91.9

85.9

85.9

Finland

94.3

98.9

83.7

83.4

83.4

Iceland

97.0

86.7

82.2

100.0

82.2

Austria

94.1

83.3

81.8

93.3

81.8

Sweden

96.2

97.8

94.2

81.6

81.6

Australia

98.9

87.8

86.0

81.4

81.4

Ireland

97.3

81.1

93.4

83.2

81.1

Germany

97.6

90.0

90.4

80.2

80.2

Japan

95.2

80.0

80.3

85.4

80.0

Norway

100.0

94.4

91.9

79.5

79.5

Belgium

94.4

85.6

82.3

78.0

78.0

Singapore

97.5

93.3

99.6

77.7

77.7

Netherlands

97.4

92.2

93.2

77.4

77.4

France

94.5

76.7

74.9

65.2

65.2

United Kingdom

95.8

90.0

85.0

65.1

65.1

United States

96.9

82.2

99.9

55.3

55.3

Improving in one area can help a country improve its performance in all four areas. For example, corruption can take a toll on a people’s well-being, stifle economic growth and spark a desperate struggle for mere survival that can rob a country of its peace. Likewise, improvements in education — a “human development” issue — can reduce tolerance for corruption, open up additional economic opportunities and calm the overall social environment.

Some countries, including Canada, have done a good job in that regard, and have the excellent quality of life to show for it. But for now, the Danes can justifiably pat themselves on the back for a job well done — and grin broadly at how jealous the Swedes, their traditional friendly rivals, will be.

To garner some publicity ahead of Valentine’s Day, Amazon produced last week its annual list of Canada’s 20 most romantic cities. As in past years, it included some odd picks. Cities like Montreal and Quebec City, known for their character and nightlife, were completely excluded from the list. Yet cities like Grande Prairie, Alta. and Burlington, Ont. — cities which even some locals might hesitate to describe as “romantic” — made the cut.

What gives? There’s a good chance that Amazon’s own methodology inadvertently results in a list of Canada’s dullest cities instead of its most romantic ones. As the online retailer described in its news release, the rankings are based on Amazon’s per capita “sales of romance novels (both print and Kindle editions), romantic comedies, relationship books, jewelry and sexual wellness products.”

@abbyploms I know like Abbotsford is the least romantic city in Canada 😂😂 how is this real

Naturally, this would tend to produce a skew toward places where these things are not easily available in the community and must instead be shipped in.

So, if Abbotsford and Grande Prairie aren’t exactly Paris in the Spring, where might love be in the air in Canada? “Romance” is difficult to quantify, and a city’s romance factor can vary greatly between the inner city and the suburbs, so just for fun, let’s have a look at one basic metric: the percentage of the population age 15 and over who are available — that is, single (and not living common-law), separated, divorced or widowed.

Since 43 percent of Canadians aged 15 or older are “available”, one would expect that the areas where this percentage is far higher must have some sort of special appeal — to be the places where love, or at least sex, are in the air.

Fortunately, Statistics Canada allows us to focus on specific neighbourhoods now that they provide demographic statistics by Forward Sortation Area (FSA) — better known to most Canadians as the first three characters of our postal codes.

With that data available, which of Canada’s urban neighbourhoods have the highest concentrations of available people? A Top 10 list, with a few hard-to-explain surprises of its own:

1. Montreal, Que. H2X (Place-des-Arts/Ville Marie): This neighbourhood on the northeast side of downtown Montreal can claim to be the Singles Capital of Canada. Not only are 70 percent of its residents neither married nor in a common-law relationship, it’s one of those rare neighbourhoods in which the majority — 57 percent — are single. Credit at least in part a large university population, with McGill University and UQAM being in close proximity.

2. Vancouver, B.C. V6A (Downtown Eastside [!]/Strathcona): A questionable #2, admittedly. While Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (often abbreviated “DTES”) is somewhat notorious for being one of Canada’s most troubled neighbourhoods, at least the area can claim to have lots of available people, as 70 percent of residents were neither married nor living common-law as of the 2011 census. Perhaps there’s a Skid Row effect at play here? Nevertheless, between the mountains and the sea, the City of Vancouver is at least a stronger contender than some of Amazon’s picks for “most romantic” status.

3. Saint John, N.B. E2L (City Centre): I’m not too familiar with foggy Saint John, N.B., but for whatever reason, the inner city has a disproportionately high concentration of available people, given that 68 percent are neither married nor living common-law, and nearly one-half are single. The city has become a popular cruise ship stop, so it must have something going for it.

4. Ottawa, Ont. K2P (Centretown/Golden Triangle):The nation’s capital attracts a lot of young people who work long hours for low pay as political staff. So, perhaps it should be no surprise that inner-city Ottawa, within walking distance of Parliament, has one of the nation’s highest densities of available people. Not only are two-thirds (68%) neither married nor in a common-law relationship, but the majority (53%) are single.

5. London, Ont. N6B (City Centre-Woodfield, south/east of Downtown): Another surprise. Unlike its British namesake, London, Ont. has a reputation for being rather dull. But it’s a university town, and that’s perhaps why its inner city has a disproportionately high number of available people (68%) and particularly of singles (48%). This particular area also has a number of high-rises, which in themselves tend to have higher concentrations of single, separated, divorced or widowed households than do neighbourhoods full of detached homes.

7. Ottawa, Ont. K1N (Byward Market/Lower Town/Sandy Hill): With the University of Ottawa within its boundaries and Parliament Hill being just a 25-minute walk away, this area of Ottawa, heavy with apartments and condos, can’t help but to have its share of available people. Sixty-one percent are neither married nor common-law, and 51 percent are single.

8. Toronto, Ont. M5T (Chinatown/Kensington Market):Located west of downtown Toronto and made famous by the ‘70s TV show King of Kensington, this area of the country’s biggest city adjacent to Queen’s Park and the University of Toronto is not a bad place to look for love: 66 percent are neither married nor common-law, and 50 percent are single.

9. Halifax, N.S. B3J (City Centre): If you’ve ever been to Halifax, it’s not hard to see how its city centre could be conducive to a bit of romance, with the harbour on one side and the Citadel on the other. A large university population — Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s universities being nearby — help account for the fact that fully 58 percent of the area’s residents are single. Add in the divorced, separated and widowed, and the availability rate rises to 66 percent.

10. Montreal, Que. H2L (Gay Village): Perhaps it should be no surprise that a neighbourhood simply known as the Gay Village has a population that is 66 percent available, including 52 percent single. Located northeast of downtown Montreal, the neighbourhood is close to both UQAM (ostensibly boosting the student population) and to the nightlife, for which Montreal is famous, along Rue Saint-Denis and in the Quartier des Spectacles.

Winnipeg falls just short of the Top 10 list, with R3B — north of Portage from the University of Winnipeg to the Exchange District — being good for a #11 finish, as 65 percent of residents aged 15-plus were neither married nor living common law in 2011, including 45 percent who were single. While this includes some sketchy areas — a moonlight walk along Cumberland Ave. is perhaps not the safest thing to do — the presence of the university and the development of the Exchange District quite likely helps.

At the extreme opposite end of the list, the hunt for love is not likely to be harder than in Ingolf, Ont. P0Y. Not only is the population small — just 63 people — but only 17 percent of residents aged 15 or older are neither married nor living common-law. But if we once again exclude the most thinly populated areas, Canada’s most “settled” neighbourhoods — the bottom five — include:

5. Calgary, Alta. T3L (Tuscany/Scenic Acres):These two outer suburbs in northwest Calgary start off this list, with just 29 percent of those aged 15 or over being single, separated, divorced or widowed. Not much to do for fun out that way, except perhaps to go for a coffee at the Starbucks in the strip mall parking lot.

4. Winnipeg, Man. R3X (Island Lakes/Royalwood): Way out on the edge of town, with virtually nowhere to go for fun locally, this suburban area is Married-With-Children country. Seventy-one percent of the area’s age-15-plus population is either married or living common-law, leaving just 29 percent available.

3. Bedford, N.S. B4B (Bedford/Hammonds Plains):This deeply suburban area on the western outskirts of Halifax offers little to see or do, except perhaps a walk in the woods. Not surprisingly, this has one of the country’s lowest proportions of single, separated, divorced or widowed people — just 28 percent.

2. Whitby, Ont. L1M (Brooklin):Brooklyn, New York might offer a lot for the single, separated, divorced or widowed to do; but Brooklin, Ont. — politically part of the city of Whitby, but physically separated from it by a freeway and open land — certainly does not. Strictly suburban Brooklin doesn’t even have a town centre; just a mall called the Brooklin Towne Centre where you could look for love at the Tim Horton’s, or perhaps at Dollarama. For more excitement, downtown Toronto is just 45 minutes away — by freeway.

1. Calgary, Alta. T3M (Cranston/Auburn Bay):What could be more romantic that the cul-de-sacs of the most far-flung subdivisions of a city defined by sprawl? Just about any other neighbourhood in Canada, really. The Cranston and Auburn Bay neighbourhoods, on Calgary’s southeastern edge, are the most settled of Canada’s urban neighbourhoods: three-quarters of its residents aged 15-plus are married or living common-law, leaving just 26 percent up for grabs.

Academic writing has a long and proud tradition of being painfully dull and slow to get to the point, but perhaps that’s simply because no one was able to research whether there was a link between how people vote and their sex lives. Until now.

Finally, three researchers from three U.S. universities have successfully navigated the academic minefields of obtaining time and money and overcoming ethical objections to answer such questions we’ve all been dying to know the answer to, such as whether U.S. conservatives or liberals are more likely to make love in the missionary position.

“Those who gave more oral sex or received more oral sex are more conservative on out-group/punishment attitudes (anti-immigration, pro-death penalty, etc.), but more socially liberal (support gay rights, pro-choice, etc.)”

“Those who have more sex with a woman on top are also more conservative on out-group/punishment attitudes, more likely to [have voted] for Romney, but more socially liberal. Those who have more ‘doggy style’ sex are more conservative on out-group/punishment attitudes, but more socially liberal.”

“People who masturbate more are more liberal on all attitude dimension, self-report as liberal, Democrats and [as having voted for] Obama.”

“Those who engage in more S & M [were] more likely to vote for Obama, self-report as liberal and have more liberal social attitudes. People who engage in more hand-to-breast contact [were] more likely to vote for Romney, self-report as conservative, and be more conservative on out-group/punishment and economic attitudes.”

“People who kiss on the mouth more [were] more likely to vote for Romney, self-report as conservative and Republican, and be more conservative on out-group/punishment and economic attitudes.”

After Americans go to the polls Nov. 8 to elect a new president, after what has undeniably been the most wretched and embarrassing presidential race in modern history, a desire to have less politics and more cuddling would be entirely understandable. But let’s just hope those couples where one voted for Trump and the other voted for Clinton can patch up their differences.

“The relationship between sexual preferences and political orientations: Do positions in the bedroom affect positions in the ballot box?” by Peter Hatemi, Charles Crabtree and Rose McDermott will be published in the Personality and Individual Differences journal in Jan. 2017.

On Dec. 23, Statistics Canada released its latest monthly estimates on how much business the nation’s drinking places were doing. A “drinking place”, as defined by Industry Canada, includes “bars, taverns or drinking places, primarily engaged in preparing and serving alcoholic beverages for immediate consumption”.

Out of pure curiosity, I used Statistics Canada’s CANSIM data portal to calculate each province’s per capita drinking-place receipts for the year from November 2014 through October 2015.

What I found was quite surprising: not only were Manitoba’s drinking-place sales of $24 per capita well below the national $61 average, but we were way down at the bottom of the nine provinces for which data are available. (British Columbia had the nation’s highest per-capita bar spending at $119, followed by Saskatchewan at $106 and Newfoundland and Labrador at $93.)

Per capita receipts reported by “Drinking Places”, as defined by Industry Canada, Nov. 2014-Oct. 2015. Statistics Canada data excludes P.E.I. and the northern territories due to small sample sizes.

Perhaps this should be no surprise. Manitoba started out in the 19th century as a chaotic frontier society, and over-compensated for the problems caused by drunkenness by establishing a liquor bureaucracy that even now retains rather restrictive liquor laws. Add to that a culture that still frowns upon alcohol consumption in the rural south; and the typically North American urban sprawl and car dependency, which necessarily puts limits on the ability of a group of friends to gather for a pint or two of beer on their way home — a limitation that those who can walk or take public transport home need not be so concerned with.

While all this might save Manitobans the inconvenience of loutish after-bar behaviour or of needing to step over vomit on the morning streets that go with the territory in more urban environments, it also raises the question of whether Manitoba’s weak bar and pub culture makes the province socially too closed for its own good.

This possibility goes back to a discussion I had a year or two ago with a Czech expatriate now living here who shared with me the one thing he disliked about life in Manitoba: that it was “a very lonely place”.

He had grown up and lived in a society where the local pub and pizzeria were not just places to eat or drink: they played a critical role in building and maintaining a sense of community — places where the locals gathered to share news, stay connected to old friends, and meet new ones.

Here in Winnipeg, he found that there was a huge void. The neighbourhoods had no natural gathering places, and were dull and lifeless — a collection of commuters who went straight home after work, closed and locked the door, and stayed there until the morning — with no real sense of community. “Nothing but houses,” he lamented.

As unfashionable as it might be to say this in our culture, alcohol has an important role to play in the building of a sense of community.

In her book Watching the English, British social anthropologist Kate Fox highlighted the importance of shared alcohol consumption to linking people together. The better any particular venue fared in what she referred to as “The SAS Test”, the more amenable it was to bringing people together:

“SAS stands for Sociability (by which I mean specifically the acceptability and ease of initiating conversation with strangers), Alcohol (an essential flirting aid among the inhibited English) and Shared-interest (environments in which people have interests in common, or a shared focus – settings likely to have the kinds of props and facilitators that help the English to overcome their social dis-ease).”

At the top of Fox’s list: the pubs for which British communities are famous. Though they only pass two-thirds of the SAS Test for lack of a shared interest, Fox noted that they do allow for informal introductions that make shared-interest finding possible.

Parties and nightclubs – two other areas in which alcohol consumption within moderation is encouraged – also ranked high on Fox’s list. At the bottom of the list: trains, supermarkets and galleries, which Fox described as “no-go areas” for making social connections.

“[The researchers] concluded that alcohol stimulates social bonding, increases the amount of time people spend talking to one another, and reduces displays of negative emotions . . . Results showed that alcohol not only increased the frequency of ‘true’ smiles, but also enhanced the coordination of these smiles. In other words, alcohol enhanced the likelihood of ‘golden moments,’ with groups provided alcohol being more likely than those offered nonalcoholic beverages to have all three group members smile simultaneously. Participants in alcohol-drinking groups also likely reported greater social bonding than did the nonalcohol-drinking groups and were more likely to have all three members stay involved in the discussion.”

Such bridge-building between people matters. In 2010, this blog discussed the possibility that, in spite of the famous “Friendly Manitoba” slogan, our community is actually a bit hesitant to let newcomers into our existing, long-established and somewhat closed social circles. But the newcomers keep coming: in 2014, we welcomed more than 16,000 foreign newcomers to our province, and more are on the way.

This vastly increases the number of people living here who are in search of new social contacts to relieve the isolation of starting a new life in a place where, prior to arrival, they knew almost no one – or even no one at all. The constraints that restrict the number of places in Manitoba that pass “the SAS Test” serve to isolate newcomers and long-established residents alike.

In April 2016, Manitobans will venture to the polls to choose the government that will guide the province through the final years of the 2010s. In that election, further reforms to our traditionally strict liquor laws in such a way that will give our communities more places that pass “the SAS test” should be on the agenda. So too should be a discussion about the other choices that keep us atomized and prevent the development of a more meaningful sense of community by inhibiting even moderate alcohol consumption, such as the state of our semi-reliable public transit systems, the difficulties in obtaining taxis and/or shared-ride services, and the community-deadening effects of urban sprawl.

Others were helped by their cultivated images: Canada’s Brian Mulroney and Australia’s Bob Hawke rapidly ascended to the prime ministership of their respective countries, despite neither having had any prior cabinet experience, in no small part because they both fit the image of a prime minister.

In addition to a lacklustre campaign that bounced from controversy to controversy, could Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s campaign to become Premier of Ontario — which ended in defeat Thursday as Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were re-elected to a fourth term with an unexpectedly large majority — been hindered by Hudak’s image?

“…[The perception of a person being competent] is negatively and significantly correlated with baby-facedness, with a correlation of 25.3%, which is significant at a 1% level. Essentially, the subjects are classifying CEOs with mature-faced attributes as competent . . . Our results are concerning particularly in the light of our findings that there is no relationship between competent looks of the CEO and firm performance.”

“Babyfaced individuals within various demographic groups are perceived as less competent, whether by their own or another group. Its impact can be seen even for famous politicians: When images of former U.S. presidents Reagan and Kennedy were morphed to increase babyfacedness, their perceived dominance, strength and cunning decreased significantly.”

There is, alas, good news for the baby-faced people of the world: although often associated at first glance with the baby-like qualities of being “submissive, naive and weak”, as Zebrowitz and Montepare note, having a baby-face can be an asset when the ability to convey warmth and honesty is critical. They also draw attention to other research by Princeton University’s Alexander Todorov, showing that “more babyfaced men tend to be slightly more intelligent . . . more highly educated, contrary to impressions of their naïveté, and more assertive and more likely to earn military awards, contrary to impressions of their submissiveness and weakness.”

When things go from bad to worse, there are even indications that baby-faced defendants in court are better at defending themselves against charges of intentional wrongdoing — but more likely to suffer a judge’s wrath when accused of negligence.

None of this is a defence of or an excuse for a lousy campaign; but the tendency for a more mature face to be favoured when competence is a campaign issue is something to be kept in mind by all political observers and news junkies.